Chapter 26

TWENTY-SIX

The scents of the hospital cafeteria were welcome after being in the morgue. Josie cataloged each smell as they passed the various kiosks. Grilled chicken, French fries, pizza, stir-fry, pasta drenched in spaghetti sauce. All of it combined to elicit a grumble in her stomach even though she and Noah ate before they reported for their shifts. They were legendary among friends and family for their complete incompetence when it came to making meals—Josie more so than Noah. They’d been taking cooking classes from their friend Misty so that if—hopefully when—they matched with a baby, they would be capable in the kitchen but still, everything not made by them tasted better than their paltry creations. Josie’s mouth watered as they came to the coffee counter.

Noah said, “Go find Turner. I’ll get us a couple.”

She found him at a corner table, a half-eaten slice of pizza in front of him. As usual, he was scrolling on his phone. Josie tried to see what was on the screen as she approached but he sensed her behind him and quickly put his phone face down on the table.

Josie sat across from him. “Want to tell me how you know my sister yet?”

Turner took a bite of his pizza, chewing slowly. Avoiding the topic. Noah slid into the chair next to Josie, pushing a cup of coffee toward her. Looking at Turner, he said, “What do you have?”

Turner took his time swallowing and wiping his fingers on a napkin before picking up his phone and swiping a few times, presumably bringing up his notes app. “Stella Townsend was a student at Denton University, pursuing a degree in communications. She quit school for a while but was re-enrolled for this fall. She was a production assistant at WYEP until recently when she dropped down to part-time. I talked to a couple of her coworkers and neighbors. They all said she has no significant other, no stalky exes, and they weren’t aware of her having any trouble with anyone lately. Don’t worry—I got assurances from Stella’s boss that they wouldn’t release anything about her death until we gave them the green light.”

It seemed counterintuitive to trust the press, especially after the shakedown from Dallas Jones the other day, but Josie knew WYEP’s upper management wouldn’t want to burn any bridges with the Denton PD. Not if they hoped to stay on good terms for future stories.

Turner went on, “Warrants are out for her phone records and the GPS from her car. Also there was a messenger bag in the back seat that contained her laptop. Got a warrant out for that. Waiting on that information to come back.”

Josie said, “Did you find out when she was last seen? Where she might have gone missing from?”

Turner grinned again, smugly, thumb flying across his phone screen. “Oh honey, wait till you see this.”

Josie held out her palm. Without even looking at her, Turner’s free hand disappeared beneath the table as he searched his jacket pocket. He came up with a dollar bill, pushing it across the table to her. At least this one wasn’t moist. He turned his phone screen toward them. “This is footage from the parking lot of Stella Townsend’s apartment complex from threethirtyp.m. on Monday.”

It was the same time that almost all of Denton’s police resources were focused on searching the fifty-acre lot where Sheila Hampton’s car had been left, trying to find Cleo Tate. The footage was in color, but the camera was angled downward, from a substantial height. Maybe from a light pole. It made it difficult to see the face of the man who weaved his way through the parking lot until he found Stella’s Camry, especially since he wore the same hat that Charlotte Thompson had described. It was too far away to make out the logo on the front of it. The strap of his cross-body backpack was visible. He leaned against the driver’s side door. Arms folded, he waited.

Turner said, “I tried following him on surveillance cameras. Found him walking past a few businesses nearby but lost him after that. Didn’t get a clearer look at his face.”

“He’s too careful,” Noah said.

In the upper right of the video, the seconds ticked by. Finally, Stella came into view, wearing the clothes she’d been found in, and carrying a knit purse and the messenger bag Turner had mentioned. She paused a few feet from the man, motioning to her vehicle.

“There’s no audio, unfortunately,” Turner said.

The man spoke. Josie only knew that because she could see his jaw moving. The camera angle didn’t allow for them to see his lips, which was unfortunate since Noah was a very good lip-reader. As he talked, Stella moved closer. The conversation lasted a minute and seventeen seconds and then Stella directed him toward the passenger’s side. They both got into the car, and she drove off.

“That’s odd,” said Noah.

“He didn’t appear to threaten her,” Josie added. A fluttering sensation filled her chest. “But she got into the car willingly, from what it looks like. She might have known him.”

“That’s what I thought,” Turner said. “None of the coworkers or neighbors I spoke with seemed shady. We’ll need to take a deeper dive into Townsend’s life. She hasn’t been enrolled in any classes at the university for about two years, but I could always talk with some of her professors there and see if they remember her having any problems with anyone. Whatever we can get from her phone and laptop might help. Her social media accounts aren’t very active. She doesn’t give out much personal information there.”

Josie took a sip of her coffee. “Rowland’s property is remote. If Stella drove them there and he left her car behind?—”

Turner interrupted her. “Then he either hoofed it out of there or he had help—someone to pick him up. Rowland’s property management company turned over their surveillance footage from the premises but there’s no clear shot of the helipad. You can see figures moving but they’re too far from the camera to be of any use. Already did the geofence warrant for the area surrounding Rowland’s property. The Chief had everyone and their brother over there at first light doing a line search in case he did walk home. Found nothing. We’ve also got a warrant out for the GPS from Stella’s car to see if she stopped anywhere on the way to Rowland’s. That’ll be in any time now.”

Nothing. That’s all this case had to give. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Josie tried not to feel defeated and yet, the image of that third polaroid sat front and center in her mind, taunting her. Reminding her another woman was out there somewhere, probably already dead.

“Maybe Hummel will have something for us. There’s still prints and DNA to be pulled from the car, the knife, the polaroid. Stella’s clothes.”

Even as she said it, she had a feeling Hummel would find nothing of use.

Noah said, “Hopefully the DNA profiles from the Cleo Tate homicide will come back sooner rather than later. If there’s a match in CODIS, we can get this guy.”

“Sure, LT,” Turner said, without enthusiasm. “If you say so.”

Josie said, “How about Remy Tate’s phone records?”

“Waiting on those, too.” Turner’s fingers drummed on top of the table. He wouldn’t be there much longer. “Waiting on everything. By the time I see you two again, you’ll be up to your eyeballs in reports.”

Turner was right. By the end of their shift, Josie’s eyes burned with exhaustion, irritated from hours of sifting through thousands of pages. She could barely keep them open. She never thought she’d look forward to seeing Turner, but he was due to relieve them at midnight and she couldn’t wait for him to get there.

She wasn’t even annoyed when he showed up a half hour late, guzzling down one of his disgusting energy drinks, and belching a hello. He took one look at her and grinned. “Wow. You look like you got dragged behind a car for the last eight hours.”

Noah lifted his head from the documents he was reviewing. “Turner. Don’t start.”

Josie sighed and stretched her arms over her head. “And yet, I still look better than you.”

Turner dropped into his chair and started emptying the pockets of his suit jacket. Three more energy drinks, his phone, a charger, and some crumpled pieces of paper. “You find anything good? Actual evidence we can use?”

The update from Hummel hadn’t been encouraging. The DNA profile from the knife used to kill Cleo Tate and from her car hadn’t come back yet. The DNA from Stella Townsend’s crime scene had been sent to the lab, but the results would take time. He had pulled a couple of sets of unknown prints from inside Townsend’s car but nothing from the knife or the polaroid.

In addition to that, the geofence around Rowland’s property had turned up nothing. Josie was certain that the killer had an accomplice, given the remoteness of the murder scenes, unless he’d thought far enough ahead to plant an additional vehicle nearby. If so, he had to have used an older vehicle that didn’t have an infotainment center or GPS in it or, if he had used a newer vehicle, he’d somehow managed to disable the GPS or block it. Doing so would be fairly sophisticated—and illegal—but it wasn’t impossible.

“Nothing we can use yet,” Noah answered.

Josie shuffled the pages from Stella Townsend’s phone records around until she found a series of texts she had flagged earlier. She handed them across the desks to Turner. “When you interviewed Stella Townsend’s coworkers at WYEP, did you talk to a producer named Vicky Platt?”

Turner skimmed over the messages. “Blonde chick—I mean, woman? Yeah. Stella was her PA. She was pretty upset. Didn’t stop her from flirting with me.”

Josie rolled her eyes. “Not every woman you speak with is flirting with you.”

He didn’t look up from the pages in his hand. “Don’t worry, I shut it down.”

“How’d you do that? By being yourself?”

In an amazing display of maturity, or maybe self-restraint, Turner ignored her. “These text messages aren’t cryptic at all.”

“I left Vicky Platt a voicemail asking her to come to the stationhouse in the morning to discuss them,” Josie said.

Turner took one last look at the exchange before handing it back to her. “Yeah. Good luck with that. You’re telling me between Stella Townsend and Remy Tate’s phone records, you got nothing else.”

Noah turned another page. “You’re welcome to try. We’ll leave the last of them for you.”

“Great,” muttered Turner.

Josie was about to call it a night when a new set of text messages in Stella Townsend’s phone records caught her eye. For a moment, she was confused, wondering if she and Noah had gotten their reports mixed up, but as she read on, adrenaline hit, clearing away every last vestige of her fatigue. “Holy shit.”

Noah yawned. “What is it?”

“Remy Tate’s mistress was Stella Townsend.”